Erich Ludendorff, German General and Politician

Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff (April 9 1865 - December 20, 1937) was a German general. From August 1916 his appointment as Quartermaster general made him joint head (with Paul von Hindenburg), and chief engineer behind the management of Germany's effort in World War I until his resignation in October 1918. After the war, Ludendorff became a prominent nationalist leader, and a promoter of the stab-in-the-back legend, convinced that the German Army had been betrayed by Marxists and Republicans in the Versailles Treaty. He took part in the unsuccessful coups d'etat of Wolfgang Kapp in 1920 and the Beer Hall Putsch of Adolf Hitler in 1923, and in 1925 he ran for president against his former colleague, Paul von Hindenburg. From 1924 to 1928 he represented the German V"lkisch Freedom Party in the German Parliament. In January 1933, on the occasion of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor by President Hindenburg, Ludendorff told him, "I solemnly prophesy that this accursed man will cast our Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery. Future generations will damn you in your grave for what you have done." In 1935 he published Der Totale Krieg (The Total War) in which he argued that the entire physical and moral forces of the nation should be mobilized, because peace was merely an interval between wars. He died in 1937 at age of 72. Bain News Service, no date recorded on caption card

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10978054

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